Impact of educational intervention regarding hazards of obesity and its preventive measures among students of commerce colleges of Ahmedabad city, Gujarat, India

2016-08-24T08-49-23Z
Source: International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences
Varsha Shah, Uresh Jayantilal Jain, Nilesh Thakor.
Background: The prevalence of obesity has increased worldwide in almost every country in all the age groups. A college is a key location for educating students about health, hygiene and nutrition, and for putting in place interventions to promote the health of them. Objective of the study was to know the prevalence of obesity and overweight among students of commerce colleges of Ahmedabad city and to assess knowledge of these students regarding hazards of obesity and its preventive measures before and after educational interventional training. Methods: The present interventional study was undertaken during September 2011 to December 2011 in randomly selected 3 commerce colleges of Ahmedabad city, Gujarat. Total 627 students between the age group of 18 to 23 years were examined after taking written informed consent of their parents using pre-designed, pre-tested, semi-structured proforma. Anthropometric measurements were taken and BMI were calculated. The prevalence of overweight and obesity were determined based on the IOTF (International Obesity Task Force) criteria. Single educational training for 45 minutes was given to the students and their post-intervention knowledge for same was assessed after the training. Thus collected data was analyzed using SPSS 17 (Trial version). Results: Overall, the total number of obese adults identified in whole study population was 64 (10.2%) and numbers of overweight adults were 65 (10.3%). Baseline knowledge of the students regarding hazards of obesity like hypertension, cancer, heart attack and diabetes mellitus was 19.7%, 16.1%, 16.5% and 24.5% respectively which was significantly increased to 93.6%, 94.5%, 96.0% and 94.1% respectively after the intervention. Baseline knowledge of the students regarding preventive measure of obesity like avoiding junk food/ healthy diet, exercise and meditation was 23.6%, 24.4% and 25.9% respectively which was significantly increased to 95.3%, 96.9 and 97.4% respectively after the intervention. Conclusions: There was significant improvement in the knowledge regarding hazards of obesity and its preventive measures among college students after our single educational session.


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